Grammar Matters

Apostrophes are for possession or contraction and not to indicate a plurality!

The “plural apostrophe” (e.g. no dog’s allowed, sofa’s for sale, UGH) is running rampant these days, and it’s not just my imagination. It’s so wrong that I can’t even begin to fathom how anyone could make such a mistake. I hate it when people dismiss it with, “Oh, not everyone’s a grammar freak.”

Grammar? You think it’s an issue of grammar? I hate to break it to you, but if you can’t spell “dogs,” you’re illiterate.
via strange brew

2024-05-09: Broken links in this post have been removed and/or updated.

There are 5 comments on this post.

  1. avatar
    March 6th, 2003 @ 7:30 am
    Steve Feinstein

    I think you might have chosen better examples. If my sofa was for sale, why couldn’t I announce that fact as, “My sofa’s for sale”?

  2. avatar
    March 30th, 2003 @ 2:26 pm
    Rosie Palmetto

    I have one word for you. You may need to look it up however. PEDANT

  3. avatar
    March 30th, 2003 @ 2:42 pm
    Rosie

    PEDANT……. Bye the way, your server has issues.

  4. avatar
    July 20th, 2005 @ 3:55 am
    Alex

    I know what you mean. It can be so annoying! And I don’t see anything pedantic about using the English language correctly. They’re just ignorant.

  5. avatar
    January 8th, 2008 @ 8:32 am
    dvg

    @Mr. Feinstein:
    In that case you are using the apostrophe s to contract the word is. You are saying, “My sofa is for sale.” That’s perfectly legitimate.

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